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tv   [untitled]    August 5, 2013 9:30pm-10:01pm PDT

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and partnership. so, mark, come on up. (applause) >> good morning. it's very exciting to be part of the reigniting of our sf connectivity effort. when i took the job three months ago, mayor lee challenged me to simplify, accelerate, and bring the private sector experience to, you know, bettering the architecture, infrastructure of the city. and, yes, mayor lee is right, we are behind in some ways, but the beauty is that we are ahead in many ways. and there are plenty of opportunities to leverage our infrastructure throughout the city to bring pre-wi-fi to our citizens. now, of course, when you're new in the -- any city company, one important thing is the budget. so, thank you, supervisor
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farrell, for saving me time and accelerating the effort because with thanks to the leadership of the past few years and the generosity of google, i think we have -- we can jump start this whole process and deliver results fast in ways that will hopefully make you forget the past. i also want to acknowledge a couple of the [speaker not understood]. mike mccarthy and joseph john. we're going to be partnering with sf city and phil ginsberg, margo and all the people that have been involved in this to make it a resounding success. and i think that mayor lee, it by this time next year when you look back, i would say that we will not be in the past any more, mayor lee. i think we'll be ahead and
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leading by example. so, i would like to introduce alex turk from sf city. (applause) >> thank you, mark. thank you. it's a pleasure to be here. you know, every issue needs a champion and there's no doubt that when supervisor farrell approached me a year ago and sf city, he had conviction and he had purpose around getting this done and succeeding where others had failed. and also had an idea about crawling before you walk, about finding a way that we could create access throughout the 11 supervisorial districts, throughout different socioeconomic communities in san francisco, providing opportunity. and it was something where he had said hello. it meets the mission of sf city which is essentially to engage our member companies in innovative solutions, historic problems facing the city. and we're certainly glad to be a partner. it is a great day for parks, but it's a great day for san francisco. we are lucky to be san franciscans to have great
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leadership. and as someone who has worked within city government and has seen how the sausage is made, per se, we're lucky to have a supervisor like mark farrell who has vision, who has dedication, a mayor who is very open to private-public partnership and innovation, department heads and leaders like phil ginsberg at rec and park and companies like google who care deeply about communities not just here locally in san francisco, but across the globe. we're proud to be a partner. proud to be here today and look forward to working on this, you know, in the years to come. so, with that i'll hand it back to our supervisor mark farrell. (applause) >> so, thanks, everyone for being here. i want to thank everyone who has been involved, as you can hear from everyone who has spoken. it takes a village here in san francisco and it took the collaboration of so many people both inside and outside of government to make this reality. we're all very proud to be here today. and with that, would certainly open up to questions if anyone has them for the next few minutes.
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>> [speaker not understood] talking about the broader vision over the next two years, what do you envision? and how does public private partnership as well in the future? >> i'll turn the speaker from my perspective. i think this is a great first step. as alex mentioned, this is let's find a project in san francisco that we can bite off, that we can make sure we get it done right. we took two years to do it and working so closely with google, with sf city, with department heads and the mayor's team to make sure we did it the right way and use it as a model going forward in san francisco. i know that our different department heads and mark perhaps have different perspective, but there are a lot of things in the works in san francisco to make not only in wi-fi, but other technology projects to bring to the residents of our city that the mayor certainly has taken a lead on as well and played an integral role in this. public private partnerships are a way to make this happen. special thanks to google for making this a public private
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partnership we can be proud of here in san francisco. this is truly a gift and, again, we say that with no strings attached. and that makes a big difference to the residents of san francisco and for us as elected leaders implementing those projects. it makes it a lot easier for us to get them done. >> mayor, [speaker not understood]. >> as i said, it's a good beginning. and of all people, both mark tuitu, phil ginsberg and others know it's a constant investment in technology that we have to make. and every company knows this as well as government and we're going to make -- you know, this is part of our infrastructure now. and, so, i've been an infrastructure mayor. i've been part of that infrastructure. it's not just freeways and bridges. it's telecommunication, information, infrastructure that we have to constantly invest in. you asked earlier what the
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vision was. you know, for me i've always had a very strong vision that every child that is here in san francisco, every school, every educational institution should be at its highest level of skill setting for the 21st century of a city that is an innovation capital of the world. that means we have a lot of work to get done in our schools. we have a lot of work to get done in every corridor, every neighborhood. we still have a serious digital divide in the city and in the bay area, and we're going to get everybody up to speed so that everyone who lives here and wants to be here can also succeed in technology is going to be a key to it in every single industry. whether it's tourism, biotech lifesciences or technology itself. >> [speaker not understood]. >> oh, absolutely, that was the whole reason why i touted that
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we have 600 members of sf city. alex, i think maybe in a year we'll see 800 members of sf city. there is 1,800 technology firms in san francisco. it continues to grow. they employ over 45,000 people. and i think people want to be here because they want to continue innovating with us. at the same time, as government and as service providers, we're going to continue asking for help from the private sector and be our partners. and i think that's going to help us with infrastructure as well as maintenance and services. >> as you know, [speaker not understood]. what exactly did you mean by that? >> well, i think we will always have a relationship with our business community. i go to them when i need to create 6,000 jobs for our kids in the summer.
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i'm backed up by the board of supervisors for that. we have very serious needs in the city, and we don't have all the resources. so, we hope that there will be a very good relationship that's established between the private sector and the public sector. having said that, on issues like providing free wi-fi, when we say no strings, it's kind of like the past conversations we had. we didn't want any inappropriate advertising on things or things that we felt were of value to us that we wanted kids and others to be able to have a free access to without, you know, the -- maybe the dressing up sometimes that we see happening in the marketing world. those will be ongoing discussions that we have and these are discussions that we always have with our business partners, is how could we do it this way so that we provide, you know, the right message that we all wanted to send. to me, it is all about messaging.
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and i know businesses need help from government as well. i've been in those discussions where a lot of them said, hey, you're taxing us to death. we did a big payroll tax revision as a result of that. there is just simply -- i think a relationship where there's no quid pro quo, we do it for good policy reasons that we articulate and are clear about. and that's the way we should be running government. that's also the way we should have that clean relationship with businesses. >> mayor, [speaker not understood]. >> yeah, i mean that's why we hired mark tuitu for [speaker not understood]. my competitive spirit with mayor bloomberg in new york, rahm emanuel in chicago, we're always exchanging information about you got this, you got that. our staffs and our department heads do the same.
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, and so, we're always saying, they did this. how come we can't do that? and the message gets shared with neighborhood leaders as well ~. so, i get this a lot from neighborhood leaders, how come we don't have wi-fi in all of our parks? how come you always concentrate on golden gate, for example, but not on balboa? these are the kind of things i think we're wanting to make a statement on. i think, for example, our police department a we're working on with technology, another good example. one of these days we're going to have officers be able to dot reports while they're in their vehicles in the streets rather than coming back to their stations and spending 2 or 3 hours trying to do all the reports ~. we're working on that right now. but, you know, i think any city who needs the resources at their highest performance will look towards technology to help us reduce what we're doing today that could be done faster, quicker, and more efficiently and just as thoroughly.
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>> mayor, i think you answered this already, but i didn't quite hear her question. google is going to provide the financial [speaker not understood], correct? >> yes. >> after that what happens? >> well, first of all, i think we will make whatever proper investments we will have because we will consider this to be part of the infrastructure of our parks and recreation. as we do wi-fi in neighborhood corridors, we have infrastructure there. so, when i say that we are responsible, the city is responsible for infrastructure, we will then pay to maintain that infrastructure, particularly if residents and the visitors depend upon that infrastructure to work in a certain level. having said that, it doesn't the necessarily mean that we say, okay, the general fund has got to pay for this. that is why i'm touting the membership of sf city, our technology companies. i will tout the membership of the chamber of commerce. i will tout the membership of the community benefits district
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and the businesses along the corridors that we want to improve. all of them are partners to help us figure out how to maintain all the infrastructure that we want to put in when we know that the goal is improve services for the residents. so, i suggest that it isn't necessarily going to be reflected in increase to the general fund. it could be healthy relationship with business community to help us maintain that. yes. >> [speaker not understood]. >> well, i think google is happy to do this for the reasons already touted. they agree with us that wi-fi in our parks is a very important, very notable, very honorable goal to accomplish. they stepped up as a member of
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sf city. part of a whole group of technology partners that want to help our city improve our services. and i think that when companies step that up, just like other companies have done where they lend their employees to sweep our streets, to pick up trash, to help with the arts community improve along mid-market, they're all saying they want to be great partners in the city that accompanies, as companies that employ our residents, they just want to be great partners. and i think that that's a worthy, worthy spirit and goal. it is what i consider to be one of the finest spirits of san francisco being part of this incredible community partnership. >> so, i thank you guys. i know we all have a number of appointments to go to including signing our budget that we just passed out. so, thank you all for being here. i think we'll be here a few more minutes to answer questions if you want.
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thank you all for coming and look forward to making this project a reality. thank you, everyone. (applause) >> good morning, everybody. it's sunny in san francisco, and we have a two-year budget. let's have fun. (applause) >> and i think maybe members of the board and other elected officials, but particularly the board, i think we're getting more and more used to calmness around our budget. and i really want to signal again my appreciation for the work and the hard work that it
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takes to have a unanimous vote at the board for passing the next two-year budget, which is very healthy. it's certainly a balanced budget. i'm proud of it. but how we got there was a reflection of a lot of good hard work and a lot of people to thank. i want to take this opportunity to thank the budget staff. they have been working really hard. and kate howard and steve, thank you very much for your leadership. (applause) >> and the entire budget staff is here. they continue to be labeled the fiscal geniuses of the city. they works, of course, very closely with our controller and ben rosenfield, your staff have been extremely supportive and helpful. thank you very much. (applause)
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>> then, of course, our supervisors, the entire board and their budget analyst. harvey, thank you again for working with us. (applause) >> and the entire board. i want to thank each and every one of you because you along with, of course, all of our great department heads, but in particular we continue to promise that when we bring this budget forward each year, we have that conversation. sometimes difficult, sometimes emotional, but always in support of our neighborhoods. and, so, when we come to each of the districts, each of you have been wonderful hosts. you have taken up a great responsibility to help all of us describe this budget because sometimes it's very hard to understand when people are just simply saying, i need to live in this city, i need to survive, i need to get a job, i need to have a safe neighborhood, i need to pay
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attention to the parks. i need to deal with all the things that perhaps the city doesn't provide. we need to pay attention to that. all those conversations have had -- each district has had a good opportunity to engage with our budget. so, i want to thank each of the supervisors for providing that kind of atmosphere where the budget could be discussed. in particular, this year for his first time, supervisor farrell led as the budget chair. i want to thank in particular his services for being there and having so many extra meetings on top of the ones he's had to find the consensus building that we needed. and then for he and supervisor eric mar, supervisor john avalos, supervisor london breed and supervisor scott wiener, all of them being great participants in the budget committee. thank you as a group, as part of the whole board, appreciate that very much.
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(applause) >> and again, i signalled at the beginning i was expecting cooperation from mr. rose. we got it. thank you very much for that cooperation. this budget is not only balanced, but it is a responsible budget. it is a fiscally responsible budget, one that we've learned over many years -- and when you look at other cities across the country who have not paid that kind of attention in their fiscal responsibility, you'll see some of the results that are horrible results to the rest of the country. and, so, we hope to continue being a model of how a balanced budget should have and fiscal prudence is always at a key cornerstone of it. we have the right attitude about our reserves and what we invest in. but this also is a budget about
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social responsibility and working with the board. and i know supervisor chiu is in abstein shad right now with another matter. but i want to thank him and his leadership as well ~. socially responsible budget also means that we engage our community leaders. we engage how we do services. we understand from the work of the departments that they can't do it alone. and, so, we look at all of our partners and have a budget that reflects the level of social responsibility that will carry out whether it's in the health area, in the homeless advocacy area, in the mental health area, all of the different needs. we have an opportunity and i want to thank the community-based organizations for being such effective leaders in our communities because without them we wouldn't, i think, accomplish the social responsibility that
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we all want. so, thank you cbos and community leaders for your participation. (applause) >> finally, this is also a budget that is about investment. it investments in our neighborhoods. it investments in our infrastructure. and in the broad way, it investments in our city's future. and the future is incredibly important to the people who are standing right in front of me, the young folks, because we've always said that our budget should reflect the values of the city. well, we're putting a lot of value in our youth so we have to invest in them. we have to invest in infrastructure that will last a long, long time and we'll have to invest in technology and all the future that we have. so, this is a very forward looking budget. it's a very expensive one, but it's a very forward looking one. and, so, when we look at the classes that we'll create, whether it's our police or fire
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or sheriff's department or all the other public safety departments that are challenged with heavy levels of retirement, or we're investing in departments programs or we're investing in education, like $105 million in our public school system in the next two years, people know what investment does. (applause) >> so, all of this, if you're a budget studier, you'll know that i'm speaking the absolute truth, that this is fiscally responsible, it's socially responsible, and it's great investment. and with that, i really want to again give a great thanks to all the departments that work hard, the people that work in capital planning, all the fiscal officers for each department that cuts to come in, to compliment the argumentses the department heads make. i value that because i often
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leaned on my fiscal entities in my departments that i served to be the thought provoker for me to make sure that i was able to look around the corner and anticipate costs. and, so, when we are now doing two-year budgets, we have to do a lot better anticipation. we have to have better tools to do that. that's why we lean on our controller and the auditors to give us a good look, our capital planners to give us good looks. five-year financial planning is no longer an exception, it is the norm. 10-year capital planning is now the norm. and we hope to breed that kind of fiscal approach to agencies that we don't fully control, but i know they appreciate it. whether it's a school district, the housing authority, city college, or all the other partners that we value, that they need to be a great part of this fiscal approach.
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then we can say to cities like detroit and others, we've got the answer, that you don't have to do what you did in the past or don't fall into the traps that we have the answer here in san francisco. and that will continue to be a consensus building approach taking care of our responsibilities. with that, i'd like to give the podium for a while to this year's chair of our budget committee, of course is mark farrell. (applause) >> well, thank you to mayor lee for his great leadership during this process. you know, after months of debate in city hall, after six town halls in our different neighborhoods, after an online town hall, i think what i'm most proud of today is that we're signing a budget that is not only representative of the mayor and his team and the board of supervisors, but as we stated in the beginning, we
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wanted a budget that reflected the values of san francisco, of all san francisco. and i think we've achieved that today. i want to take a quick moment to thank all those involved, starting off with my colleagues on the board of supervisors, to everyone. i think we had all 11 members there the night we signed our budget, late into the night. i want to in particular thank my budget and finance committee members as well that we serve together, and single out in particular john avalos, supervisor avalos for your leadership in this year's budget, supervisor avalos. (applause) >> who is real a great partnership working together. and i also want to thank so many people, but to quickly highlight what mayor lee mentioned and the people he mentioned ~. it's hard to -- you cannot overestimate how important so many people are in city hall to getting this budget done. it's a $7.9 billion budget. it's incredibly important and
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it matters to the residents of san francisco. and a few people in particular, first of all kate howard, the mayor's budget director. (applause) >> kate and her incredible team as well. every single person on kate's team. (applause) >> for those of you who don't know, they spend countless hours here in city hall, late, late nights, early mornings, hopefully no all nighters in particular, but without them we wouldn't be here today. to ben rosenfield, monique zamuda and the entire controller's office team, thank you so much. (applause) >> kate and ben were really partners in crime in getting this budget done and with us every step of the way and such an integral part of what we do. to harvey rose and his entire team, thank you, mr. rose, for
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all of your efforts. (applause) >> to severn and deborah, your entire team, thank you for making your funds available so we can redistribute them at the board. [laughter] >> and also mentioned earlier our city attorney's office, jon givner, our board city attorney and to his entire team, thank you all to our city attorney's office. (applause) >> and certainly everyone else from steve on down the entire mayor's staff that made this budget happen, thank you so much. and i want to give a special shout out from someone i continue to learn from on a daily basis, our former budget chair , assessor-recorder carmen chu. (applause) >> and last but not least the people i think at the end of
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the day are critical and most important, i want to thank the staff of all of the board of supervisors members. in particular, my staff kathrin stephanie is here who was on budget with me the whole year. thank you, kathrin. (applause) >> margo and jeff on my staff as well, but again, to every single legislative aide, to all of the board of supervisors members, we can't do without you and you play such an integral role. so thank you for all of why you support this year. with that, i want to thank everyone for being here. i want to thank mayor lee for his incredible leadership not only on the budget but everything he does here in city hall. let's get this thing signed. thank you. (applause) >> somebody's check is in here. [laughter]
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>> today is? >> good question. >> 24. [laughter] (applause)
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happy new year, everybody. i love the fact that we are doing a tournament here at the center. when i was in eighth grade i played on a basketball teechl. team. i have to admit i wasn't very good at it. i always aspired to be an nba player.
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regardless of playing in college or nba, i expect many of you have be leading us because of the leadership skills you are learning on >> san francisco is home to some of the most innovative companies of the 21st century. this pioneering and forward looking spirit is alive in san francisco government as well. the new headquarters of the san francisco public utilities commission at a5 25 golden gate avenue is more than just a 13-story building and office ablation. instead, city leaders, departments and project managers join forces with local architectural firms ked to build one of the greatest office buildings in america. that's more than a building.